Tortor

Too easy, and I'm not even a fan of difficult games. I bought the deluxe of this game so excited because of my experience with Monster Hunter World was so amazing. So I really went into this as a super fan. This game overall though is so easy that it's oh most a 'cozy' game to me now. It's so mindless and really lacks letting you feel part of the world. There is no investigating, no tracking, barely any walking and the monsters with the new weak spot mechanics are easier then ever to topple. I didn't die once through the entire campaign and even through High Rank 50. Not once. Sometimes I feel like the game plays itself. It plays itself because your mount takes you everywhere you need to be, barely a need to even know where the monsters hang out or any familiarity with the map. It plays itself because the weak spots tell you exactly where to hit in a bright red highlight. It plays itself because all monsters are visible and unlocked on the map. It plays itself because the scout flies tell you what to loot and gives you an obnoxious amount of information to hand hold you. You are not allowed to discover anything on your own it feels like. It's mind numbing. As soon as the monster runs away, it runs like 30 feet away, barely causing any tension to feel like it means anything. If it does run far, your mount is so far that it really serves as a fancy loading screen to mount up and sharpen while it takes you exactly to where it's going. This literally feels like an arena fighter now, just being dragged to fight and told how to fight and where to hit, so even that's not fun anymore. The monsters dont stick out as anything over the top. I remember the Elder Dragons in MHW and just being so fascinated with how epic they were built up to be and getting stomped a few times figuring out it's pattern and building up to defeat them. None of the monster here needed any sort of critical thinking, any new monster, my build felt meaningless as if i just kept upgrading to whatever is next in rarity, who cares what it is, I can take it down even if I never me the monster before. The biomes also feel so similar to eachother. Occassionally the weather changes things up which is cool but nothing stands out so much as everything is so interconnected. Also because of how hand holdy the auto running to the monster is, none of the biomes stick out as 'the biome where this monster is found' because you really dont focus in long enough to care. Even by the time HR comes around, nothing feels strange about a monster being in a different place because you barely notice. The tent system is meaningless, you can have tents out and the time needed to figure out what tent to use takes longer then to just auto run. The monsters go down so fast, you also dont have a lot of time to spare. The fighting feels so button mashy and reliant on hitting weakspots. I remember how absolutly cool it was to get a monster to fall over in MHW, but here, they fall over all the time because you have these giant areas telling you where and when it's expected to fall over, it loses it's appeal. This game lost a lot of it's charm trying to appeal to too many people by going too far trying to be accessible and took away so many responsibilities that made the game have tension. Nothing is a challenge now and I barely feel like I'm doing anything on my own or discovering anything cool. It's not rewarding, for how much easier the game was, the consumables were not weakened, leaving them now overly powerful when compared to how easy the monsters are now. I'm so disappointed and after the money I spent, I wont be returning to this franchise, this game wasn't made for fans of the series or for people who like this style of game. This game was made for people who want a cozy game which leaves prior fans out in the cold who were hoping for a similar Monster Hunter Experience.

Seriously played this for 40 hours now and still not close to done. I've also spent nothing and got all the characters except 4. I'm enjoying this enough that I think I'll get the $5 log in daily thing just cause I feel bad just how much I did for free.This is an amazing game for what it does. Great combat, fun customization, interesting characters, a so-so story.This is the first time I played a game like this and actually really attached myself to certain characters. Just really enjoyed their play style, how they moved, their voice lines or just how they are wrapped into the world/plot.I don't understand the issues with the TV sections, i like them. It breaks things up a bit. It's like playing through puzzles and all interactive the whole time, it's not like you're there in silence. Maybe people who don't have as diverse of a taste of different genres may not have expected that but it's such a small part of the game.There is so much to do but overall it will revolve around fighting or life sim stuff to get to know the characters and world. This world has me hooked and I'm really hoping skeptics give this a better chance.

Seriously played this for 40 hours now and still not close to done. I've also spent nothing and got all the characters except 4. I'm enjoying this enough that I think I'll get the $5 log in daily thing just cause I feel bad just how much I did for free. This is an amazing game for what it does. Great combat, fun customization, interesting characters, a so-so story. This is the first time I played a game like this and actually really attached myself to certain characters. Just really enjoyed their play style, how they moved, their voice lines or just how they are wrapped into the world/plot. I don't understand the issues with the TV sections, i like them. It breaks things up a bit. It's like playing through puzzles and all interactive the whole time, it's not like you're there in silence. Maybe people who don't have as diverse of a taste of different genres may not have expected that but it's such a small part of the game. There is so much to do but overall it will revolve around fighting or life sim stuff to get to know the characters and world. This world has me hooked and I'm really hoping skeptics give this a better chance.

Enjoyable in the beginning but hits a hard lull maybe around after the 2nd boss. By boss 2 I was able to max out everything and so at that point it became a bit tedious. Felt like one of those games where you are just constantly waiting on timers for something to happen. It was incredibly painful after a while. I'm not even particularly good at rogue like games so I guess it makes sense why the town management was my focus. Overall it wasn't very balanced and should have had some better pacing. You kinda see the same thing too often to make this worth finishing.

Decent short visual novel mystery. Had some strange unexplained plot holes that are glazed over a bit too casually for my liking. Was still cozy and cute enough game to finish in an afternoon. There initially is a expectation that this would be a game you would have some choices to make, you don't. It's very much a corridor and the 'choices' are few and forced to do in a very specific way making this more like a book then a game. Not a huge complaint but wish it played around with the concept a bit more as it's escalate this game from good to amazing.

Mundane and anticlimactic. Seeing articles about this trying to make it out to be this phenomenal piece is just really trying too hard to excuse the disappointment.Like the idea of disappointment was the whole point of the game. That is not fun at all. It's lame.This is more of an art piece I guess but feels really cruel for those that don't know what they are getting into and feel ultimately like they wasted their time.I got this seeing positive reviews and tried to avoid spoilers so I could be as surprised as seemingly everyone else was.... Apparently disappointment was the surprise and is commentary about expectations. I did not enjoy that at all and found it disrespectful of my valuable time.Also this game runs terribly. It makes no sense why, it doesn't do anything fancy graphically but seems to chug.

Let's be real, the story is just the worst. Even on hardest difficulty this is incredibly easy that it practically plays itself. I was going for 100% this game but after a while and doing the 2nd zone I had my fill and realized I was just numbingly going through the **** story holds this back so much. None of the characters or the plot stands out as anything even remotely interesting. So many of the collectibles are not rewarding enough and there just is so much lifeless busy work. I could not stand how bad the plot was and it constantly took me out. Its cozy and honestly kinda relaxing but in that mildly boring way where it's just not boring enough to walk away and the slow drip feed is enough to stick around when you have nothing better to do.I honestly think the studio is probably why people are over blowing how good this game is because in reality it just isn't. After a while it just plays itself.I didn't grind at all and was constantly fighting missions 3-5 levels below me. I followed the recommended path and order to play and was overloaded with so much xp constantly. All the items would have made the game trivial and even level my characters even quicker. Why on earth am I getting so many items thst appear to be trying to fast track my characters to level 30 when I'm fighting level 15 enemies? It's so weird. I enjoyed the first zone while figuring out the systems. Once I figured it out, going into the 2nd and 3rd zone didn't feel different enough to have to relearn much mote so it was repetitive. I'm not even particularly good at games like this and never played anything like it where you program a team. This game just gives so much over powered stuff and levels you so quickly that it got so boring too quickly. Going into the 3rd zone is where I called it quits. I steamrolled the last big story mission like it was nothing and being thst over leveled just took the reward out of wanting to play anymore. I could probably have stuck to it if it had a good story, but it was nails on a chalkboard.

I hate to be that person, but just play NMS No Man Sky. It just does everything better that this game tries to do and feels more Switch friendly. This game felt absolutely terrible controlling on the Switch, like, just awful controls. It also lacked a ton of depth, felt overly grindy and not at all intuitive. I had to look things up constantly even to do some of the basic of things. I was exhausted playing this, i gave it like 8 hours of my time, which is a good chunk and I never felt like I was having fun. I felt like I was constantly fighting the controls and fighting the game in general trying to get it to let me play. It's so grind heavy and when compared to competitor games like NMS, it just doesn't feel as rewarding for the amount of work you have to do to get anything done. I hated this. It was super cute and cozy, but NMS can also be cute and cozy now too with all the updates to cozy the game up. This game just unfortunately got out done by a competitor and the art style novelty just isn't enough for it to stand out.

This was super cozy and a great unwind to get sleepy type of game, not anything groundbreaking though, i admittedly got bored after sorta seeing the gameplay loop really is stagnant and the novelty wears off when you recognize how little the 'scary' stuff actually ends up mattering. It was novel at first until you sorta see the workings arnt as cool as it initially seems it could be, most the scary stuff can be avoided and the risk vs reward system just really isn't there to even bother me taking even small risks other then when required to complete quests. I really was hoping maybe the story might be engaging but again, when the novelty starts wearing off is also unfortunately when the plot starts moving, it's slow, and by that point it loses steam and doesn't do anything really wild with its premise. The gameplay loop felt really mindless especially once you upgrade really early on that trivializes everything. It's a good mind numbing game though to play when listening to an audiobook, at that point though if it's just so routine what even is the point of playing? I dont regret my purchase regardless because it was cool to see cozy games try new ideas but just wish maybe it was implemented in a more long lasting way or wish the novel idea didn't end at such a surface level to mask the game really just being the same ol thing we've seen before just with a cool new type of paint.

I was up til 4am playing this. I bought it and turned it on on a whim seeing a cozy game youtuber talk about it thinking it was some sort of lazy game I could maybe nod off to. Nope. This is like the lost addicting cozy game I've ever played and it has no right to be given how deceivingly simple it initially comes off. The art style, music and relaxing overall gameplay design though just **** you right in. It's very good and I can see why it barely goes on sale. It really doesn't need to. This holds up so well as a relaxing meditative game but also something that can draw you in and keep you awake late at night if you get **** in too much with the gameplay design. If there was one draw back to this game keeping it from being perfect is I wish it was a bit more gamey, the screen at the end when you finish a playthrough kinda isn't good when compared to all the other amazing design choices. Also wish there was something a bit more collectible on a home screen to get you something to chase to come back for multiple runs. It's not needed but something that could keep this extra long lasting

This was plainly not fun and felt like chores. Im am obsessed with cozy games but this was just notdoing it for me. In fact my hands were getting sore from all the repetitive motions, the touch screen is really not well optimized so you are forced to use controller, the controls feel terrible when you get around to putting away the 40th underwear. I also didn't really get the indirect story as much as some people claim they got out of this. It all felt very 'meh' and with very typical and safe people to be snooping on, nothing really hit me in the feels to make all these chores feel worth it. I didn't find this zen at all, I was exhausted and felt like my videogames were telling me to do chores that I plainly didn't want to do. I don't think I'd mind if there was more of a puzzle element to this but there really isn't. You just put stuff wherever really as long as it's not on the floor and it's vaguely in the right room or area. Overall it was a cute experience but probably something I'd feel better about if it was $2 but even then the time wasted still didn't feel worth it when I could have been playing much better games

This game is so cute! But darn it's just terribly made =( such a bummer too because the music, art style and humor felt so correct. I only wish maybe more experienced people worked on this. The biggest issue are the floaty controls. Just absolutely the worst jumping and movement imaginable that doesn't feel good at all and makes everything that should be basic feel so challenging. I could barely walk! Walking around just the hub worlds and around the city is so bad. So I know what the developers did too and it's such an easy fix. They implemented camera control acceleration way too high! This is something that a lot of games you can turn down but you can't here and the default is just way too high making simple walking feel so chaotic. A slight movement of the camera and your camera snaps in a really odd feeling way. Next biggest issue is the floaty controls with jumping. There is platforming here and the biggest struggle is trying to fight the controls bugging out and not being very responsive to movement. Very often my characters won't jump when you tell them too or the jump just floats way too heavily making everything feel so 'slippery'. Constantly falling off simple platforming just feels so icky because it's basic and easy but the controls just are working against you constantly. Jumping really needed some more work put into it if any platforming was to be implemented but the developers really didn't optimize this at all. Fighting also feels really off too thanks again to the real floaty movements and everything having this slippery feel to it like it's taking a micro second to register anything which is something Ive never felt in a game before but you feel such a world of a difference when it happens. Such a shame too because this game feels like it has sooooo much potential, like the writing is just the most adorable and I'm in love with the concept, premise and characters. The combat I can see potential of feeling good but there just isn't tight enough controls to pull it off. The music implementation with the combat also doesn't feel the most baked in either. It feels tagged on and doesn't feel like it's 'to the music' as much as it could. Also failing just feels so lame, the way they implemented the fail system makes everything feel so trivial. If you fail you double click Immediatly past a screen, you can blink and miss it if you arnt paying attention, you fail and just continue with full health like nothing happened and it just impacts you score at the end. Its no fun. =( Failing feels so out of your control too because the constant battle with the controls. Overall I want to like this game but I just can't see myself fighting these controls any longer. It feels like such a waste because there is so much potential here, if only the devs fine tuned a bit more.

6-7 hours to 100% and see everything. Deceiving amount of depth to this game, I definetly didn't expect the variety. I was waiting for this game to go on sale as I've seen it on sale for like $3, I eventually caved at $8 because it's been years since it was at that lower price tag and my curiosity got the best of me. Well, at $8 it was totally worth the experience. I could not put this game down until I saw all the ending from playing the absolute worst version I can imagine, to playing a grey playthrough, a focused on specific goal playthrough and eventually trying to be the best person I could be playthrough which was the most rewarding playthrough and was the last on my checklist before seeing everything. This was a really good time and I enjoyed the story telling. Very much recommend it.

This Is just plainly not good. I really thought I'd love this but the absolute terrible presentation is mind blowingly bad. The concept seems great but it's repetitive within minutes of playing and feels so incredibly lifeless and shallow. This was a complete waste of money for me as I got bored literally within the first minute of playing and immediately realized my mistake in buying this. Within the first hour you really get surprised with how little there is to this game and within the first 3 hours I just couldn't anymore. The story is just so half baked in there too that literally nothing makes me want to continue. It just feels cheap, it plays cheap and I don't mind indie games with a low budget but this felt like the lowest of the low and lack of experience in knowing how to make such a low budget work. It's also incredibly ugly. Seriously stay far away from this game, it's awful and don't make the same mistake I made. I can't imagine anyone playing this game all the way through, it feels like torture. The ideas were great but more time needed to be spent to get those ideas to form better level designs, story, more creative fighting and less brain dead AI.

Fine but desperately needed a sprint button or some way to speed up some of the tedious moments when you're trying to get multiple endings. It really dragged the game down when it's super reliant on doing maybe 3 playthrough to get a full idea on the story. You end up repeating the same thing over and over but the pacing is dragged because of the slow movement of the characters. I enjoyed the characters and plot but It was a like pulling teeth to get there.

Took around 70 hours to 100% This was great and felt worth the money, especially after the massive update on Switch which seemed to make a world of a difference on performance, load times and the look of things. I played the majority of the game prior to the update and cleaned up finishing the game at the last 20 hours after the update. This was an extremely cozy game to me. It had so much to do that you could pick and choose what you were in the mood for. I found a lot of the activities to be really stress-free and cozy but when I wanted to switch it up and get into something less cozy then there was no shortage of activities for that either. Overall there just was a lot of rewarding wandering around you could do and play at a pace that works for you. I found 100% as much as I could til the next story mission was the best way for me to get variety. As soon as a story mission was done them either more activities would open up or more side quests, so it felt really well paced. I had to put it on hard mode and that's when I felt the combat to be the most rewarding. You could feel the major differences in needing to know how to play smarter on hard mode, otherwise you just sorta sweep the floor, so i recommend it. After a while, even on hard mode, you do get very over powered, which is fine, especially with the way I was playing, so I liked feeling the rewards of my hard work. The less then perfect rating is mostly because I played prior to the big update so my experience with loading screens was impacted, it's fixed a bit not but I just wish Hogsmead didn't have a loading screen to enter every building still. That was so lame. Especially when trying to search the area for collectibles your tracking power couldn't puncture buildings that had a loading screen so of you were missing something it was really hard to figure out where. The story was also for 'meh' but that is likely from my age not being the target audience. I loved however all the inclusivity, there were so many characters from all walks of life that it made me really hopeful. I love when games have a variety of people.

This was frustrating more then anything. Like a lot of deck builders this is really reliant on randomness. There is no 'end run' button either that absolutely was the more infuriating part of this game that I just got so enraged. There are so many combinations that just arnt fun because it's out of your control and the randomness just didn't give you many options to even stand a chance. I finally decided to call it quits when I found myself spending hours losing on purpose after I recognized some combinations I got just wernt winnable with. You have to like skip your turn over and over and rush to two fights to reset your run. I plainly should NOT need to do that. That is ridiculous and such a design flaw. Because of the way to save files work and no way to reset you absolutely have to do this tedious step to reset your run. Most games like this just come with a reset run button or just allows you to quit. This game does not. Any game with randomness like this needs a reset run button, it's just entirely necessary because knowing something isn't going to work and getting trapped and forced to play until you lose, it's not fun. This game i admittedly had fun with in the beginning because I by chance got fun combinations thst I discovered. However I wasn't able to recreate a lot of what I was playing around with and when I got cornered when I was going for something specific and the random factor just couldn't work with what I was doing, I had to waste my time to lose on purpose. I hate this game

This performed amazing on the Switch for me. I noticed it performs the best when docked, when not docked there is some slight lag when hunting and the UI is a bit small. I did not run into any bugs yet and feel like this game was amazingly optimized. I can't believe the devs didn't charge at least an entry fee for this. I've definetly paid for cozy games like this anywhere from $30-$60 and some of those arnt anywhere close to how fleshed out this felt. Overall this feels very solo friendly too, I'm not much of a fan of multiplayer games so I like that it doesn't force me. The only forced multiplayer is some aspects with some of the gathering elements but there are so many players always around that i never really noticed any shortage of help. It constantly refreshes the instance you're playing in so it feels like people are always around even in the dead of night. The loading times arnt so bad either, on the Switch takes maybe 20 seconds to load in and 20 seconds anytime you need to instance back to your home. Not totally unreasonable given the Switches hardware. AAA games like Hogwarts Legacy had way worse loading times. Overall this is like the ultimate cozy experience, i only wish that maybe the devs monetized a bit more, I'm just scared with how little they monetize that this game won't have longevity. The cosmetics offered when creating your character are good enough to not feel the need to dive into the cash shop. The cosmetics are though really over priced so it kinda makes me really second guess buying currency to support the devs. I think if they lowered the prices it'd be more appealing and maybe other add-on content like new areas or whatever might work. What they are doing now is just so overly generous that I can't imagine a company letting this go on too much longer, otherwise they might go under. We will see. Just hope theyy stick to monetization thst isn't predatory, in the meantime since I been playing this so hard I might just buy a cosmetic to show my support. There is just so much content in here it's wild and really changes my percpective on other cozy games try to charge for and not even come close to delivering this much content. The performance is also amazing, however some of the hunting aspects might turn off some people as that's where you see lag the most when you're not docked. I really am so glad this game came to switch and hope the devs just keep building onto it.

A bit over hyped for it's artstyle I think. This barely felt like a puzzle game when most 'puzzles' are so whimsically out there that it just feels either overly simple with the illusion of difficulty because of the art or so whimsical that it really just is resolved eventually by trial and error. Nothing was difficult or took more then a minute or two to think through other then boss fights which were more trial and error. This also felt very short and could be finished in afternoon. The mechanic of worlds in worlds also wasn't really used as much as you think it could. It was used a handful of times to solve a few puzzles aimed at it but most the game pays no attention to the cocoon mechanics. I dunno, overall it just felt confusing on what the aim was for too. Nothing really gave a lot of emotion for 95% of the game as the artstyle was just not helping with being able to relate to anything. The 'story' mostly felt like just a means of getting from one puzzle to the next. I'd skip this or maybe wait for a deep sale and pick it up for $5

Finished in two days, but in fairness, I barely slept. This is not pick up and play friendly and definetly has to be finished in a short amount of time. This is because this game is very relian on progression through information in both story and mechanics. You will absolutely not be able to step away too long or you will get lost in both aspects. This had an amazing science inspired and philosophical story. I did have to cheat slightly at the 2nd to last puzzle from the true ending as it was probably the only puzzle design flaw that did not come off naturally or was far from being something I could even conceive of. Highly recommend this beautiful game.

Poor pacing, tropey boring characters and uninteresting plot. For a story heavy gave this was just unbearably bad. The mechanics of this is it's worst offender and completely hinders the experience. It focused way too heavily on that terrible tree of choices with what felt like 10-30 second scenes that constantly threw you back there. I never felt like I had any time to breath or cozy into what was going on. I loved it he graphics, beautiful art style but thats it. Even the audio was grating with these breathy deliveries that never felt natural to me.Overall this should be avoided, lifes too short to settle for below average stories.

Poor pacing, tropey boring characters and uninteresting plot. For a story heavy gave this was just unbearably bad. The mechanics of this is it's worst offender and completely hinders the experience. It focused way too heavily on that terrible tree of choices with what felt like 10-30 second scenes that constantly threw you back there. I never felt like I had any time to breath or cozy into what was going on. I loved it he graphics, beautiful art style but thats it. Even the audio was grating with these breathy deliveries that never felt natural to me. Overall this should be avoided, lifes too short to settle for below average stories.

Finished at 100% completion at maybe around 25-30 hours. A little short for a full priced game but still had a blast. I really enjoyed just collecting everything in this, it had such a great gameplay loop and feeling of community when playing online with strangers. 2 of the hardest levels for me took a solid maybe 8 hours combined to finally nail down. So when comparing the 30 hour run time it took to 100% I was a little disappointed I couldn't maybe milk a little more out of this as I was really enjoying myself. The hardest level I played though was such an incredible experience. Me and this stranger just had this like agreement that I could totally tell they were really willing to build off eachother with our standees and timing to get this done together. Hours into it and a combined effort I just barely missed the finish line and at the last second they placed a standee for me and we finished it together. It was exhilarating and I was so happy after all that effort. All with just the limited communication, this game just really felt complete with the online experience to get moments like that. This game was just such a joy and I hope nintendo does more games like this. I'm not even a big fan of side scrollers but this just it for me.

Can beat in 20 hours for the base game without DLC Lags on switch when campus gets bigger. I noticed it would lag and chug a bit after unlocking and filling up a 3rd plot of land for a single campus map. It's not so terrible that it can't play but there are options to unlock more plots of land if needed and i cant imagine trying to continue this game and let it get that large. You kinda dont need to anyways as 3 plots always seemed like enough. This game is cozy, unchallening and maybe even entirely too easy. I would very often plateau on a campus after maybe 3-5 hours. It becomes even quicker every subsequent campus as it becomes routine or you have templates on rooms you use often or get really similar setup routines. After about 5 hours with a campus I really felt like I saw everything I was going to see, anything extra just felt like extra fluff content in case you want to stick around and decorate or maximize everything. The base game could easily be beat in 20 hours. I maybe burned through it quick as these types of games are very second nature to me. I liked figuring out the systems but after finding the routines that worked i definetly felt a little let down as there really didn't feel much left. None of the students or staff mechanics stick out in a way to connect with characters so I definetly didn't like choose custom outfits or anything, kinda made no sense. I did decorate a bit, that was fun at first but the options do get a little sparse. I enjoyed my time enough to get some mindless fun out of it but didn't like it enough to really consider any of the DLC. It sorta over stays it's welcome and doing the same routine to set up a new campus with slight differences just wasn't enough for me. I really shouldn't be able to rack in more money then I know what to do with in the first 2-3 hours, its just plainly too easy. Maybe a kid though would get a kick out of this.

Bad score mostly because of cost.I did not feel like I got a good value for my **** can be finished in maybe 1-2 hours. And even then some of the puzzles started feeling lazier toward the end. It felt like the developers had a really novel idea and fun gimmick but were already running out of ideas on how to use it which felt really disrespectful of my time and money spent.This could have easily been massively expanded into more puzzles. I've bought indie games that have both lasted way longer and felt like had more of an effort then this game gave. I just feel ripped off and want my money back. There just feels like there is no excuse to end the game where it did, it made no sense and never even felt like it gave me a chance. The gimmick is fun and like an hour into it I really felt like 'ok cool, I think i got the hang of this, it's getting kinda fun now' and then the game ends..... Like, right when some repetition starts happening that makes puzzle pieces click together on how to use what you learned and then the game ends... It felt like a tutorial to learn the game mechanic but instead I paid money for this before I felt like I even had the chance to use what I learned to play the game and it suddenly ends. I'm like so embarrassed I didn't check more for reviews on this. I just never encountered this before and it was a hard lesson learned that there are 1 hour puzzle games out there that end at the tutorial.I dont mind short games, I've played plenty if this had been maybe 5-8 hours long I would have felt like I got my moneys worth for sure. For what I got I feel like it's easily a $2 game and even at $2 I may have felt a little on edge because it's such a tease on what could have been and even at a low price like $2 ita really not about the money but about me taking my time to learn a game mechanic that is novel and unique and then suddenly not have a game to apply it to when I just got a taste of enjoying the feeling of getting the hang of it, which felt really empty in the end and disappointing.I dont even thing I would have played this if it was free =(

Bad score mostly because of cost. I did not feel like I got a good value for my money. It can be finished in maybe 1-2 hours. And even then some of the puzzles started feeling lazier toward the end. It felt like the developers had a really novel idea and fun gimmick but were already running out of ideas on how to use it which felt really disrespectful of my time and money spent. This could have easily been massively expanded into more puzzles. I've bought indie games that have both lasted way longer and felt like had more of an effort then this game gave. I just feel ripped off and want my money back. There just feels like there is no excuse to end the game where it did, it made no sense and never even felt like it gave me a chance. The gimmick is fun and like an hour into it I really felt like 'ok cool, I think i got the hang of this, it's getting kinda fun now' and then the game ends..... Like, right when some repetition starts happening that makes puzzle pieces click together on how to use what you learned and then the game ends... It felt like a tutorial to learn the game mechanic but instead I paid money for this before I felt like I even had the chance to use what I learned to play the game and it suddenly ends. I'm like so embarrassed I didn't check more for reviews on this. I just never encountered this before and it was a hard lesson learned that there are 1 hour puzzle games out there that end at the tutorial. I dont mind short games, I've played plenty if this had been maybe 5-8 hours long I would have felt like I got my moneys worth for sure. For what I got I feel like it's easily a $2 game and even at $2 I may have felt a little on edge because it's such a tease on what could have been and even at a low price like $2 ita really not about the money but about me taking my time to learn a game mechanic that is novel and unique and then suddenly not have a game to apply it to when I just got a taste of enjoying the feeling of getting the hang of it, which felt really empty in the end and disappointing. I dont even thing I would have played this if it was free =(

Beautiful game and extremely satisfied with the story. I admittedly played this after the third game wanting to expand what I know about this universe. The 3rd game is by far superior in every way but this was still such a blast. Only issue I had with this game was the tone was weird and the combat kinda **** or was buggy. Tonally it hovered around this really immature, oh most childish, tone and theme of 'friendship is magic'. You hear a lot from the main character 'we will defeat you with the power of friendship' which really speaks to the weirdness of the tone. The main character gets called out for being a child often, makes it a point to let people know he's too young to drink and overall gets treated like he's a very young kid. This theme of friendship is magic gives the feeling that the target audience is young children but it obviously is not because look at the rest of the cast. It's immediately obvious when you run into the featured main cast which are scantily glad women with giant chests. Some of the female characters have outfits the are just lewd and the humor often pokes at sexuality and being sexual towards the child main character. It's odd. Other then that, when it can be ignored, the story is stunning. It just really hits all the marks for me as far as world building, great characters with growth and a plot that is expansive and easy to understand. I loved it. The combat is wonky. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated with bugs during combat that i just turned on easy mode and no-aggro mode a lot so I can run past trash mobs. So many times I kept trying to engage in complicated fights just to get thrown off a ledge or the monster to fall off a ledge rendering everything I just did useless because it restarts everything. There is also this system that requires field skills that absolutely messed me up because it's not really focused at all that it's plot critical until it becomes plot critical. I was tossing all the blades I would roll and not paying attention to this aspect and found out the hard way that I couldnt progress the plot without a lot of certain field skills. It messed with the pacing a LOT. If you're not expecting this it could seriously be very hard to recover from as you scramble to get blades with those field skills which is up to RNG. I seriously got stuck for hours grinding to level up certain blades and trying to roll new blades because I couldn't progress the plot. Its a flawed masterpiece and honestly, I'm still so glad i went back and played it as it helped with some context now with the 3rd game.

'beat' in around 75 hours. This game in a way could be endless though if you have wanted it to. There is however a background narrative and a plateau on how much more you can progress though that was noticeable right around 50 hours. When I started reaching the plateau I mostly was just waiting around for a certain season to finish some quests and the community center. With that time I was able to engage a lot with getting to know the community, so it still felt fun. When I was making $1 million+ in income and never really felt struggling anymore and anything extra felt like fluff, maxed out all my stats, finished a good chunk of relationships, I definetly knew the end was in sight. I really enjoyed my time with this and honestly so glad I finally got around to playing. I knew there was hype about this game and I can see why now. It's really the ultimate farming/social sim game and has everything I could have asked for. I really enjoyed managing and designing my farm. It was the ultimate cozy game for me to zone out to when listening to an audiobook. I also enjoyed the locals and getting to know them. Although I wish some more story beats were given to them all, some felt kinda pointless to level up and even a bit tedious. Overall though I'm super satisfied with this entire experience. When I finally felt like I reached the end and plateaued, in my head I roleplayed that my job was done, the big bad was kicked out, grandpa was happy and my character sold off everything I saved up throughout my play through. By the end I had around 30 million, so my character could leave into the sunset rich and fulfilled.

Fetch Quests is really all there is to this game. It gets stale fast. You also run out of stuff to do by design. The game forces you to stop playing and to come back later. This is fine but I felt like in some sessions I'd run out of stuff to do in like 30 minutes. Its an absolutely stunning game visually though, like, i just can't get over how pretty it is and the art direction was just genius. Its all very safe and cozy with the atmosphere. When I'm enjoying a game I don't like being turned away from my enjoyment and forced to come back later. Also I just needed more variety. This is a very non-gamer type of game, you play this maybe at the end **** session to unwind to if the lack of variety doesn't turn you off. It after a while felt like chores. Logging into this to do your 30 minutes of chores wasn't very fun and I question if my time invested ever felt worth it. I'd rather be playing something else where the progress felt more meaningful and not blocked off if i did want to invest more time.

Very quirky and cute game but didn't really resonate with me personally as something very memorable. I think I would have felt better with this game if i had spent maybe $10 on it. At $30 I just didn't feel there was enough to be worth it. I found it to be really repetitive and the amount of ooblets unimpressive or just not standout/interesting enough to care. The ooblets having 3 different color pallettes to each just didn't feel rewarding enough and felt like a way to artificially inflate how many ooblets there are. The art style I think is what i found a little grating. It just kinda weirded/creeped me out. It has this cheap indie aethetic that I couldn't really get into. I totally don't mind games that arnt flashy with its visuals and channels a specific art style instead but this just felt very odd to me. I also had a hard time getting into the gameplay loop. It didn't feel pick up and play friendly as I sorta had to relearn everything if i put this down for a week as the amount of systems felt a bit tedious to all keep track of and a bit directionless. I don't usually have this problem as I play a lot of life sim type of games but this just didn't feel intuitive. I think its the type of game I'd probably have to completly invest my time into from start to finish but I just didn't like it enough to feel the need to do that. I'd still recommend this game to anyone that finds it on sale. It's different enough to be worth a shot but may get kinda dry when you see all the systems get repetitive.

An adorable time waster. The humor, cute art style and several references that are fun to catch it's potato form was a really good time. The story in the background was more of a means to get more references out there and get things moving along with upgrading your shop. I did find myself getting really bored though of the gameplay loop right when getting to the last stage of shops. Right around then I think i felt like I got my fill for this game. You could definetly spend hours just chasing higher numbers if that's your thing. I would necessarily call this very zen though or cozy because there is always a very real threat of running out of money. For the price though of getting it on sale it's definetly worth it to try for anyone wanting something easy going that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's also very pick up and play friendly although you probably won't want to put it down too long because there are a lot of systems that are easy to lose track of how to maximize. If you forget what you're doing it's easy to sink.

Cozy, relaxing and oh most meditative. Always. Even if you want to the game will slow you down to a crawl. If **** Valley, or really any farming/life some was a hint of overwhelming, then this game is perfect. This game is so easy and so laid back with its gameplay approach that it feels like meditation sometimes. You could seriously just lose hours and hours doing whatever you want. The game doesn't have even a hint of a punishment system that would cause any stress on not doing something right or being fast enough. The characters are so cute and adorable that I just loved unlocking more and more people to see what weird quirk they can contribute. The progression system at the start also feels very rewarding with slow and gradual feeling of upgrading and making things better and better. Also the like hassle free way to farm, gather and build was just so well thought out with its respect for a player and not putting too many button presses to do a lot of the routine activities. The only big downside to this game is that once you do kinda want to progress things faster, there isn't a way to and it feels like a slog. It's like driving in a 5 MPH speeding zone and there is no traffic but traffic cameras everywhere. Like you appreciate the safety and low and chill speed but now that there's nothing holding you back to go faster since you're totally into the game, you just can't, there just isn't any way to go faster past this snail speed that was nice at first but then becomes an annoyance. I like was getting stuck because I felt like I could totally see the potential to go faster at times but the game, by design, slows you back down to a snails crawl at all times even if you want to do things faster you're not allowed to. The progression and pacing just sorta slows down to a crawl and it stops being rewarding. After a while I got irritated with this restriction to always go this slow lost its novelty to me. I really wanted to see the max relationship to each character and max out every building but, ugh, the pacing just wouldn't allow that to be a realistic goal. It started demanding way too much all the sudden that it felt suffocating. I'll still keep this game around to play when I need something to meditate to though. It's very pick up and play friendly. Just so weird that when you start liking the game too much the design of the game like chills you back down to oh most force you to find it just 'ok' because it doesn't want to be too exciting and keep this 5 MPH pace at all times.

Overwhelming. I'm a full grown adult and nothing about this cute game felt intuitive enough. I was just having a hard time keeping track of all the different systems and combined with the simplistic graphics, i couldn't. The art style and graphics are amazing but have a huge draw back of being hard to read, hard to see even when playing docked. When the park starts getting more full is when things get harder and harder to distinguish and keep track of because the art just sorta meshes too much together. It feels really fast paced with the day to day too. There is a pause mechanic of course but to see if things work or not you get a small window of opportunity to make corrections and with all the systems running it just sorta made me feel incredibly anxious. This is not a relaxing game at all and not for those who may get even a small amount of anxiety because this will bring it out. The lack of intuitive systems also makes this really not a pick up and play game. You absolutely can not step away for a few days and just pick this up for a fun time. It requires a lot of memorizing of the important systems and playing a minimum of a few hours to work through particular goals. Anyone with even a small amount of ADD might find this to be a struggle. I found it to be too much to handle and avoid this game like the plague now. Its very in depth game that may work for some people, but to me, it felt like a job that I should be getting paid to manage this much stuff that is hard to see. At certain points the pacing also just feels off. Its a weird combination of too much waiting and micromanaging a mess in between a lot of waiting and hoping your waiting pays off and results in profit. Ugh.

Around 9 hours to finish. Not a lot of replay value to make it worth playing multiple endings but still felt worth it to me. I loved the writing in this game. The characters were so fun and well developed to the point that I genuinely cared about what happened with them. The writing does a good job developing motives, personality and showing growth throughout the story too. I found the jokes to be hilarious too! It was definitely my kind of humor and even if some jokes didn't land, I still appreciated the light hearted, high camp and just goofy nature of the jokes or silly situations. It's definetly one of those games that dependably put a smile on my face nearly consistently as the tone frequently stays high energy and ridiculous. I didn't really have any moments of cringe with the writing, I think those that might not like high camp humor though and a story that doesn't take itself too seriously might be turned off. It rarely gets serious or gives any story beats that isn't aimed at being silly until the last chapter. The last chapter takes a darker turn and has some really sweet or touching moments. I really enjoyed the climax and seeing where the journey ended up and eventually concluded into. Performance wise, it was lacking on the switch. I did have some lag with loading of textures that was annoying but it was not frequent and when it happened it was brief enough to not impact the experience. The multiple endings and choice mechanics were not the best. There isn't a lot of good reasons to replay to get multiple endings. It'd take a lot of work just to go back through the story for slightly different dialog for such a little payoff as the difference isn't significant enough to feel rewarding. I'd recommend maybe just look at the multiple endings on YouTube. For that reasons, choices felt meaningless other then to keep engaged and for flavor with the story that you can customize. Definetly treat this more as an interactive TV show then a telltale-like game. It didn't bother me though as I enjoyed the show that was delivered and it had good pacing by ending right when it felt like it should start wrapping up. I'd definitely recommend to anyone wanting a silly low pressure interactive show to watch. I'd recommend to put it on easy and simplify the controls though so when you get button presses or prompts you don't need to stress about trying to do all that, it's distracting more then fun.

This was really engaging and a fun story. The main character though is so incredibly unlikable and creepy that it threw me off at first. For anyone that is thrown off by a character like this, it makes sense why he's like that later in the story. I've never really seen a main character portrayal like this to this extreme of a creep. The writing would have to be really creative to redeem this gross character and make it make sense why he's like that and thankfully it sorta does. Obviously can't spoil anything but a big downside still to the character, even though I did end up liking the direction it went, it took way too long to build the main character up. This is a lengthy visual novel and through the main route and even some alternative routes, i think maybe 20ish hours in it was starting to click to not be painful. That's just too long to have a pathetic character pathetic all over the plot like that. It got exhausting in long stretches and sometimes his internal dialog was just laughably way too long to get to the point that I was thankful I could speed read. He gets so repetitive and that just isn't fun even if it's to build up his characters flaws. Speed reading was easy because he'd like say the same thing to himself 10 - 30 times before stuff starts moving again haha. The main premise/concepts were interesting. Sometimes I sort of questioned if it was as simplistic as it sounds or maybe I was just overlooking something that gave it depth. It was weird and different at least, which I liked a lot but maybe could have used some fleshing out motivations more then what was given for some of the antagonists, they just sorta come out of nowhere without a lot to attach to, it's very villainy villain foe the sake of being a villain trope that a lot of anime sometimes does. The co-star ladies though I enjoyed their stories and writing for them though so it balanced out in a way to still be engaging even if the antagonists **** at least the co-stars were fun. I'm a female gamer and not attracted to females, a lot of the sexy stuff didn't do anything for me, was a lot of the times creepy but didn't get in the way too much for the story. Very fan service heavy for men out there to enjoy. It's easy to ignore though because the creeper main character makes it sorta his personality so much that you get numb to it. I'd recommend, it's no Steins Gate, but it's a good time still.

Sometimes I felt like this game was setting goals to see how many generic lines of anime dialog it could fit into everything. It seriously was so eye-rolling bad with one line after another being so either poorly written or painfully generic. Th characters were difficult to enjoy anything about too. Villains felt so generically evil for the sake of being evil. Any attempts at back story for the villains just wasn't ever good enough to feel worth it. There just wasn't enough build up to make any of it make sense and sometimes just felt too convenient. The blank slate generic amnesia Main character you play as was also cheap and went along with the rest of the generic writing. Sometimes feels like an AI could churn out this stuff if you give it direction to give me as many tropes as possible so all of them can be stuffed into this game. Also an annoying gameplay feature is the random extremely hard battles they are not winnable and losing will either put you back to your last save or restart you back to your starting area. You can flee or get away from it either. That was just poor gameplay design and I absolutely see no reason for it. Sometimes your phone rings to up tension and causes you to get chased and risk going crazy, you can answer it and get a tutorial early on that tells you that beating the battle will sometimes let the phone ringing stop. What it doesn't tell you is that sometimes those battles are the unwinnable kind to wastes your time. Why? It makes no sense. Sure make it harder but why make it a waste of time impossible fight by throwing random level 90 fights against my level 5 character that the first move ends the match. Such a weird choice to include that in this game, did no one tell the developers that it makes no sense and isn't fun? The combat get tired too. Just doesn't feel very high on variety enough to make many of the fights be very distinguishable. I can deal with bad gameplay if a story is good enough or if characters are enjoyable enough to be around. The premise of the game is just poorly written and made this feel like a disjointed mess that it felt like only an edgy young teenager may mistake this for deep. The look of this game also could have used more work. I don't mind graphics like this but the outfits and design were still boring and the character portraits felt generic and lifeless. I dont recommend this game though, it's painfully skippable and made me feel sad how much time I wasted even if I bought it on sale.

Life is too short to play painfully mediocre to bad games. There are just so many better games in the world to spend your precious time with. I got this on a deep sale, i think maybe spent $6 on it. Even at $6 I spent too much because my time is just worth so much more. The combat is terrible, it's janky, stutters, doesn't feel fluid at all. Nothing about it felt particularly special, just more of the same. The movement didn't feel fluid either, randomly the game won't be responsive to jumping and dashing just didn't feel rewarding enough. Visually it's poorly optimized for the switch as even on the OLED, I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. Everything just was so tiny on handheld mode that I couldn't tell what was what. It's not the sort of game worth playing docked either, it's visually better but can be a bit fuzzy still. The camera angle just wasn't thought out very well. The story is painfully generic, like painful that I was agonizing over the lame story beats. The voice acting, especially the AI companion just was so annoying. 'Enemies Detected' with every combat encounter became such an eye roll, it's like, stop telling me it couldn't be more obvious that enemies are detected because they literally spawn in my face, the AI telling me feels so disjointed and poorly thought out. Overall, this game is a huge waste of time and not even worth it as a budget title because your valuable time on this earth is worth more then what this game can offer. Please don't play this.

20 hours to 100% Can finish with light side questing in around 15 hours. This game absolutely had to shocked with how much I enjoyed it. The look of this game is deceiving as it sorta can come off as a silly kids game but it's anything but. The writing tackles some mature subject matters and handles it all so beautifully. I did not expect at all that this game would have as good of writing as it did. It had me charmed with how great the characters were written and their development throughout the story. The writing really made me care about these characters and made them feel living and breathing. I totally enjoyed them all and getting to know them. The plot of the game gets wild. The cute exterior of this game gets really bleak, dark and slightly disturbing towards the end. I was fascinated with how the overarching plot managed to pull off something deep and meaningful out of a collectable monster catching genre. It's definitely something that will stick with me and even made me tear up a bit. The gameplay is also just so fun and well paced. Right when things are getting repetitive a new area opens up. Stumbling on new bugs was a fun gameplay loop to it too. I really enjoyed filling out the journal of all the bugs and tackling the variety of ways to capture them. This game is just so incredibly stylish with its presentation. The characters and environment are so whimsical and fun to get lost in, I found it all so creative. I also enjoyed the music and voice acting. Overall I seriously enjoyed my entire time with this game, it's difficult to think of anything negative after having such a well rounded experience.

17-20 hours to complete. This game is the ultimate fetch quest. Everything is a fetch quest. 100% fetch quests. Seriously. This game though was fun for a while. The dialog, world and plot is all very whimsical and witchy. I loved that part. It felt like what a typical adventure game would feel like except instead of action you get crafting and fetch quests to deal with every problem. Lot of cute memorable characters and stylishly cute story lines. I did not like the performance though. Crafting an item caused my game to lag 8 seconds for every item. For a crafting heavy game where you're crafting hundreds of items throughout your playtime, that lag is super noticeable and annoying. I wished the experience was more snappy and smooth. Also it took 20 seconds to move to each area. Also incredibly annoying because you will need to sometimes go through 4-8 loading screens during some crafting missions that require a lot of revisiting of areas. Later in the game I also didn't like the need to revisit older areas to get very specific, harsh to get items to craft something new. I wish there was a converter system or loot that contained those annoying items to get. For example you'll need to craft a item to finish a fetch quest, but you need to craft 3 items to craft that item, but to craft those 3 items you might need to craft 3 other items to even start crafting those 3 items and imagine what it feels like when youre low on some items to craft those items. To get some of those items to start crafting you have to kill a monster that requires it's own item to craft but you need to craft an item to craft that item to kill that monster that drops an item you need to craft an item. Its a gradual progression of getting out of control and feels less and less rewarding the deeper you get into the game. It's awful. I feel like the more you progress there really should have been a better feeling of achievement and getting better or stronger instead of way weaker. Because the items to craft and the complexity gets out of control to the point of getting irritating. It was an ok time for the first like 10 hours, but the game just loses control of its crafting system in a way that becomes hard to appreciate. Filling out your recipe book felt like it'd be fun but the reality is the more recipes you have the more insane it gets keeping track of all the multi tiered leveled of crafting and incredient gathering is needed that requires it's own crafting to achieve. It becomes a nightmare.

Completed in 15 - 20 hours. Stylish and incredibly creative experience. It just oozed with personality with amazing character and world building they **** me right in. I seriously turned this on not expecting much but as soon as I got started, i seriously didn't sleep that night and absolutely suffered physically to play into the next day aiming to beat it. I just wanted to see what happened and wanted to explore. This game does such a good job just giving you absolute freedom to get lost and figure things out on your own. Despite just feeling sorta dropped in, the mechanics still made the investigation still feel like it had a good flow. Its a lot of information but it's honestly so satisfying connecting the dots on your own. I seriously was so convinced at certain points of 'oh this character doesn't seem there is anything to worry about them so I can cross them off' to 'soooooo I was wrong, they character is shady as hell'. Honestly the writing is just so fantastic. The characters felt like living breathing people. The world, ugh, it was just tragic and uncomfortable. I seriously got sick to my stomach at certain points because how the world was depicted just was so eerie, uncomfortable and surreal at times. I've never played a game like this in my life and honestly, I seriously want more games like this in my life. The quality of writing though is just so above and beyond what I'd ever expect in a game. I seriously will remember this game for a while.

Cozy but kinda boring due to a lack of gameplay elements that can be challenging. Overall it's sorta like a farming sim without the hassle of farming and instead you go out into the open to forage for materials that the map will reset everyday. The lack of permanence when foraging or even waiting times to get materials **** any challenge out of collecting. Its like a easy mode farming game in a genre already incredibly easy. I didn't really like gameplay loop although I can imagine this would be a good introduction to this style of game for a very young audience. The writing was also not really engaging me. So many of the characters felt like hollow puppets with repeated lines constantly. Like... Talking to a character 4 times it game me the same line each time and gave experience towards that characters friendship each time. It's so lazy seeing how the writers really didn't even try to make the NPCs feel alive. The minigames also were more of an annoyance then fun. Overall I think if you're looking for something mindless and cozy after a stressful day then this might be an ok game to pick up, once you're relaxed enough into the game though you really start seeing the flaws and will quickly get into something more engaging.

I desperately tried to enjoy myself but oof, the writing was just so bad. The combat just felt too on rails too. I bought into the hype and good reviews but feel like I fell into the trap of something over rated. It's clearly not as amazing as everyone makes it out to be. Maybe the lack of exposure to what actual good writing is leading to people thinking this is good or I'm just spoiled. I'm a huge book nerd, I've read and reviewed hundreds of books just within the last few years, so I'd like to think I'm a pretty good judge of what good writing is like. This was not it, it felt cringey, dry, overly reliant on exposition dumps and poor pacing. You get overwhelmed with nouns of people, places and things that just arnt introduced in a way that allows a person to get attached to the world or being able to recognize what's in it. Story is important for this game because in the first 10 hours for example, 7-8 of those felt like it was reading dialog or running to the next place to get to the next piece of dialog. Lots of mini cut scenes, so it's very obviously story driven but unfortunately nothing about it felt original. The characters fall into tropes and so does the plot structures and foreshadowing. It just is so predictable that i feel like an AI wrote it and plugged in just as much stuff that we've already seen done before. I may be spoiled as I've played so many great story games and read so many books that my standard might be a little skewed but even without all that I think if anyone stepped back and looked at this objectively it really is just not good. The gameplay pacing is also sorta bad. I just didn't like the combat system. It sorta played itself in a way with very clear choreographed moves and timing made super obvious. Some of the moves were also ridiculous and didn't make sense leading to be taken out of the immersion. For example why is an ultimate move a guy stabbing the ground and a mountain size sword comes out of the ground at the enemy? It just feels so poorly thought out because it doesn't make sense, why is he doing that? Why's the sword grow? Why after all that is the damage barely double-triple that of an average attack? It's giving characters powers for the sake of it with no explanation. Worse part of the combat that made it all feel sorta automated was the heavy reliance on overdrive. Moves pretty much picked themselves depending on how it impacted the meter. There are some things you can do to play around with it but it felt like the game was telling me how to play exactly how it wanted me to instead of letting me experiment and try and figure things out on my own. The upgrade system is also very typical. It boils down to just numbers. It was more of a chore to sort through loot that was just chasing a higher number as the equipment barely made much of a difference other then making sure the numbers are higher at the first opportunity you get to increase it. I hate when games do this. I like when games make upgrading change a whole play style or make nigh and day differences so i feel more in control. This definitely does not do that, you're very much stuck with certain roles and have a lot of limitations, turns upgrading into a boring chore. Exploration wasn't very good either, again felt like a chore as it rarely wad rewarding enough to go off the beaten path. I just did not enjoy the tedium of it all as it always felt like the game was on rails with what exactly it wanted you to do and go to. It gave the illusion of being open when in fact it's very much on rails. Only thing that got me going was the art was really pretty as well as the good music. The gameplay and writing though just isn't good. I can see some opportunity in there for something potentially good but the author relied too heavily on exposition dumps and didn't really finesse the dialog or plot structure to something more original.

18 hours to nearly 100% everything. Didn't experience crashes like the other reviews on here indicated. Maybe their was an update by the time I started playing and it's no longer an issue. This is an asolutely adorable game. Seriously when i started like 10 hours just flew by like it was nothing because I could not get away. The writing and humor in this game just took it to the next level for me. It was adorably witty, dry and fit with the theme really well of being a bumbling bear trying to run a business that they are not at all qualified to do. The premise is nonsense and I love that the writers acknowledged it and made some good consistent jokes. The Cruel shark character was probably my favorite. The shark consistently would read you to filth in such a high camp way, I definitely giggled a ton. The management aspect of this has such a good loop too. The game design was clever with how they eased you into harder things. For example you start your first area just making room, don't have to worry about bathrooms because there's an outhouse already and don't have to stress about anything else just rooms. The 2nd area they then ask for rooms and bathrooms, don't have to worry about dining though since there is a diner in the area. The 3rd area you then have to worry bout all 3 with the addition of cooking. Etc. Etc. Etc. The design behind this was fun and felt like meaningful progression to manage more and more. Right when you're in you're way to the 4th area the game does a great thing too and opens up hiring a concierge so the stress of managing all the properties don't tie you down too much either so I never felt overwhelmed. Just superb job with pacing, it just felt so fluid ! Designing, Building and making guests happy was fun to try and maximize what I can do with each space given. The currency starts flowing in easily so it's fun to go back and make upgrades periodically and really mid max. Only thing I didn't like about the game were the UI was a bit difficult with a controller. It felt like it used touch screen logic but there is no touch screen enabled. Very weird UI use that in the beginning made me feel a bit cluttered navigating, by the time I'm on to building area 3 though was right around when I hardly noticed anymore. The cooking part I think trained my brain with where they were going with control. It was complicated wrapping my head around it but you get used to it. Overall this game is quirky, adorable and excellently paced. As long as you're patient with learning the controls and UI awkwardness then this game is totally rewarding. It made me smile and feel fuzzy inside with its campy writing combined with a great management sim.

So-so combat and so-so town management systems combine to create a so-so-so game. I wish either category of this games mechanics had more depth, like either go all the way with the. Combat fleshing it out more and flesh out the town management systems more. The combat just didn't feel tight enough for me or experimental enough so it overstayed it's welcome. Same with the town management, it was a bit chaotic figuring out at first that led to some frustration. After figuring it out the depth with the followers felt so throw away that it was really difficult to care about any of them. I really wasn't drawn into the end goal or big picture, wishing a little more was done to make the player more connected with the followers to make the town system more engaging. It was overall and alright game, maybe a good time sink for some if you have nothing else better to play. There's so many games out there though that do either of the main 2 things this game does better. I think the cutsey artstyle and camp idea of a innocent little lamb and cult cutsey followers try to hide the illusion of this being a so-so game by distracting with the humor with the premise. Take that away and it's a very basic game.

100% completed in about 30 hours. Very collectable driven game with its gameplay loop of checking off boxes of things your pikmin can carry to base. That's really it, that's all you do, carry treasure and characters to base. Once you unlock radar, which is very early in the game, the game tells you where all the treasures are too so nothing is ever really hidden or challenging on locating everything. It was ok, I think hype around the game is a little overblown as it's not necessarily very fun, more so just something cozy, light hearted and with a good loop behind it to mindlessly go about tasks. It really was repetitive, the differences in pikmin didn't make a huge change to gameplay as they ultimately all did the same thing except color coordinating what pikmin is used to destroy what wall, not very clever and just felt a little cheap. This is my first pikmin game too, so i really didn't have any nostalgia for this type of gameplay to overhype my expectation. The puzzles were not challenging either, Its hardly a puzzle when you the same solution is used for nearly every puzzle. Boss fights also were meh, you have so many pikmin you can just kill most bosses with sent your entire swarm and they'll go down in a few seconds. I think a small child would enjoy this game because of its simplicity. If I was a child though I'd probably get a little bored of it too once reach the 4th area and really just doing the same thing over and over again. It felt like work or doing chores. The things I did like was the camp writing conversation, treatures were fun to see their description and the night time tower defense was fun. Overall it was an ok time for someone looking for a mindless time sink, it's however nothing very memorable as it doesn't leave a lasting impression.

Very fun to play with others. I put this on the big screen to play with my family. The controls are so simple even a non-gamer can play. Its fun to put heads together and work through some of these puzzles. Some were just so clever and was rewarding to piece it together. There are difficulty spikes sometimes though, i do wish there was maybe a hint system built into the game. I ended up finding this really non-spoilery hint website that gives 3 different levels of hints to each puzzle. That was very helpful when stuck. Overall, yeah, fun puzzle game that did something that I havnt seen before. I'm blown away with the concept and creativity to come up with something like this.

The music was bopping but the gameplay really got tiresome after a while. There really isn't a good variety of enemy types that it all felt very wash and repeat until you got to the next boss fight. The enemies all get really old to look at due to way too many overused generic enemy types and the types that do get different don't visually get too exciting compared to the rest. The main characters and Co stars are also very plain looking. I wish more was done to spice them up to be more larger then life looking. They all sorta blend together visually as well. What's really questionable is their 'transformation' is just so subtle that I honestly can barely tell there is anything different. Really takes away from the fantasy when it just doesn't go far enough from a visual percpective to get the characters we are supposed to care about to stand out more. I really was not digging any of them and found the character writing sorts generic and lazy. The enemies were decently written. I liked them more then the main cast because at least they had some more interesting motives and felt passionate with what was driving them. I really enjoyed hating them and visually they were also more interesting too. The gameplay was where I fell off. The dungeons were just boring corridors. I hated it. I could not be more underwhelmed everytime going into a dungeon. I hate to compare games but when you have persona 5 out there being bombastic, over the top and ooze with style, those standards are sorta hard to let go of when playing another game that is channeling the same vibe. This game really needed to step up to be impressive enough knowing these comparisons would be made. But like yeah, these were exceptionally boring dungeons even ignoring the comparison to the obvious. The combat took way too long and became a chore after a while too. I liked it for like 20 hours initially but after it really didn't get any more in depth as the game progressed, yeah, it wore off quick. Upgrades and gear felt useless too. It really boiled down to very minimal number changes that rarely were noticeable. It wasn't rewarding just seeing numbers move and not really feeling much of a difference in practice either visually or how the flow of combat would go. Combat just sorta went the same way every time once you get understand it. Organizing the best combos was really time consuming, I wish there was a speed up option too. Some combos you'd legit have to look through the entire fight scene again and again and again just to get the right timing for a small nudge at a time for some of the fights where your underleveled. Again, was neat at first knowing you can take out enemies like that but the reward was sufficient enough to warrant how much time it would take for just a random fight. Some of the Super moves were laughable bad too. Made to feel like it's significant but for some of the characters it felt lazy. The plot was ok, i liked the enemies, it wasnt anything mind blowing. I think not being able to get impressed by any of the characters really ruined my ability to get attached to the plot. The best thing about this game was the music. The way it was implemented in having 3 different versions of a track was fun and themed to the dungeon. I enjoyed myself some of the time, not all the time and often was disappointed. A very mixed game. Not the kind of game I'd jump to if talking about games with someone and I'd unlikely recommend.

Something about this game I could just not put down. I tried to step away but couldn't stop thinking about wanting to go another round. Without an engaging story I sorta thought this game wouldn't have enough to keep me invested. It really makes up for it though with fast paced gameplay, a great reward system, a feeling of getting better or more powerful with upgrades, tight controls and a good variety of enemy design and character customization options to play around with between each run. The map layout was also interesting and not something I've really seen before. It really like zips you to the action very quickly and doesn't leave a lot of downtime to get bored. I saw a review of this game on Switchup which convinced me to buy it and those guys really got it right. This game is addicting. The gameplay is just so good and scratches an itch I didn't know I had. It's definitely a bullet-hell Hades with its gameplay mechanic but with a little more options to adjust the difficulty and more frequent upgrades. If i had any complaint it would be that a good story would have just taken this above and beyond but I understand it's a indie small dev game. This totally delivered with its gameplay for me and is going to be my go-to for a while when I need to break up some of these story heavy or complicated games for a while and give myself a break with some mindless action that dependable can deliver the fun.

Incredibly frusterating. I liked the controls at first but the gameplay was just not good. The runs took way too long between each map just to fail on the last map and therefore fail the whole thing and start all over again. It's wildly bad design to be not at all rewarding for far too long. The audio is also just atrocious. The music could not be more generic and the overall atmosphere created by the enenies and actions just don't have a lot of punch. Just nothing about this game is good other then it was cheap and a $5 lesson learned to stay away. The visuals also just get so bland and repetitive. This feels like a grind heavy game just looking at just how much you have to do to get an upgrade. Without a hook though in so many other aspects, nothing is really done to get a player to want to grind this game out.

The writing for this is terrible. I'm a huge fan of danganrompa and bought this game full priced fully expecting some comparably good story. The main plot and side quests just don't hold up with its writing for such a story heavy game. Some of the writing is just laughably bad with the side quests that I wish they just didn't include the side quests if they wernt even going to try. The horrible attempts at story telling really breaks the immersion. For example on how bad a side quest is: you'll get a side quest from a teacher who claims to be getting stalked, everywhere she goes she sees a shadow following her, she's terrified and needs your help to find out who it is. You then talk to 4 students that are in the immediate area, with icons above them and takes like 45 seconds to round up the information of some mindless observations by the students. You then tell the teacher that the music teacher is stalking her. Yuma then points to a music teacher behind them, who pops out and days 'oh sorry, your said you liked me' then the teacher apologizes that it was a misunderstanding. They both then metaphorically shrug their shoulders like it was no big deal and quest ends (what happened to being terrified? Why stalking for so long? Is no one going to question anything about this?). It just feels so lazy. There are so many mindless side quests like that. The quests give nothing to the story and feel painfully tacked on in both mechanics (because it's always a 'talk to # of people') and story (because the poor writing is always similar to that example I just gave). Everytime I see side quests it just feels like a terrible waste of time and pulls me out of the games atmosphere with its bad writing. The first few chapters are just bad too. I wish that prologue bit was handled better. It felt weird trying to go all out that quickly like that for characters you just met. It's cheap. It feels like no time was spent thinking through some of these story structures for a story driven game. This is a walking-sim, visual novel with mini games similar to danganrompa. The story is the main feature and I just had a hard time latching onto the bad writing and poorly developed characters. In danganrompa you spend so much time with the same characters through out the game and can see them grow and get attached to them the more they flesh out. This game the murderers just feel so empty. Heck the first murder is a good example in the prologue on what it consistently feels like. By the end of that prologue you really know nothing about the murderer or care about them because you just don't spent enough time to attach to them to care or the victims. Each chapter sorta rinse and repeats the same issue of trying to speed along the victims and murderers characters that ends up making them feel very wooden. I just don't get it. Did they not playtest this story or did they rely too heavily in the zany stuff with the labrynth to distract with just how bad the writing is? The co-stars to each chapter really don't help either other then variety to the mechanics. It's such a waste too. For example the co-star detectives are really caged in to just play into a trope like the character that just cares about money, the character who is a creep for girls, the ditzy girl, etc. etc. Their characters just rarely stray from the trope designated for them and really makes everything going on with them so predictable. Danganrompa did this too with tropes but because you spent so much time with the characters you got to experience character growth and see how they interacted with the world. They felt less caged in to just their trope because of the time they was given to flesh them out. This game just doesn't do that and doesn't leave much room to do that. Overall, this was a huge disappointment. It taught me to research bad reviews more and not rely on the name of a developer.